John Hart Leaves Braves Organization

The Braves announced on Friday that former president of baseball operations John Hart has stepped down and is leaving the organization “to pursue other opportunities.” Hart’s departure comes less than two months after GM John Coppolella resigned from his post due to infractions on the international free agent market and in the domestic amateur draft.

While it has been reported that the league would not sanction Hart based on its investigation into the matter, Hart was moved to a diminished role (senior advisor) earlier this week when Alex Anthopoulos was hired as the team’s new general manager and given full authority over the baseball operations department.

Through a team press release, Hart issued the following statement:

“This was a difficult decision, but it’s one that I made with the best interests of the Atlanta Braves in mind. With the hiring of Alex Anthopoulos as general manager, this organization is in great hands. I believe that the talent of the Major League players, combined with the young talent soon to arrive, makes the Braves poised for a great run of success. This is a good time to step aside and let Alex and his group put their stamp on this great franchise.

I still have a tremendous passion for this great game, and I plan to stay active and contribute to the game. I want to thank Braves fans – the best fans in baseball – for your patience during this rebuilding time. You will soon see the winning team that you deserve. I also want to thank my beautiful and supportive family. I am very excited to see how the next chapter of our life unfolds. Finally, I want to thank my longtime friend, John Schuerholz, for convincing me to come to Atlanta to oversee the rebuild. And especially to our leader, Terry McGuirk, who has shown such passion for returning to a winning place. Thank you all, and Go Braves!”

The extent to which Hart was or was not involved in the club’s front-office scandal may never be fully known. There’s a prevailing argument, though, that it’s equally as damning for the president of an organization to be completely in the dark while his two of his primary lieutenants (at least) commit what has been reported to be an “unprecedented” level of violations on the amateur talent acquisition front. Suffice it to say, his resignation — whether forced or voluntary — comes with little surprise.

Hart may well land with another organization in an advisory capacity down the road, depending on the findings of the league’s investigation. If it is deemed that his sole transgression was merely a lack of oversight of his charges, a club could look past that in order to hire an advisor with nearly two decades of experience as a president or general manager and is considered one of the more influential executives in MLB history. Hart has also served as a television analyst on MLB Network in the past and could look into other media opportunities as well.

Now I feel like the Braves really missed getting Moore. Hart moving on would’ve cleared the way for Moore to come in. I’m wondering if his resignation helps minimize the Braves punishment from the league.

Can always tell someone’s age because they recall the unprecedented glory years when calling the Braves a disappointment. They dont recall the 80s and games on TBS with 700 in the stands at Fulton when you could hear individual vendors yelling “Bud here!!” drowning out Skip doing the broadcast.

1997 doesn’t count. There’s no guarantee the Braves would’ve gone all the way but, that whole playoff series against the Marlins was fixed. It was so obvious, those umpires should’ve been prosecuted. Jim Leyland’s one World Series victory was a sham.

If you are a true Braves fan, you’d understand the irony in your statement. They won it all – while your comps did not. You’d also lop in the Falcons in there with “most disappointing franchise” as it still stings.

@tonydepalma – you have no clue what you are talking about. AA inherited a mess when he became Jays GM. He completely rebuilt the farm system by improving the scouting and drafting. With the exception of the Dickey trade the others worked out very well. I much prefer a team that is in or fighting to get in the playoffs, then having the best minor league team. Besides Thor, what talent that he traded away is doing so well in MLB. that we should not have traded?

Bump that, man. Well it’s true the only one won championship, how freaking amazing was it to Watch Glavine, Smoltz, and Maddux pitch together for 15 or so years? Don’t forget chipper Jones, who is also a Hall of Famer when his time comes, probably next year.

Seriously if it weren’t for him Braves would still be a dumpster fire. Respect where respect is due. This reminds me of fans calling for Sam hinkies head and now the sixers are one of the best young teams in the east.

When the dust clears we’re still going to have one of the best farms in baseball. Sure, most likely our 2018 MLB First-Year Draft haul will be affected along with our lower farm depth, but all-in-all, progress was made at a great expense.

True, but he was an international signing and if the investigation turns up that it has been the “culture” of the organization and stretches back to that period he could be on the table. I’m betting they end up loosing Maitan and Pache for sure.

That’s objectively ridiculous. Acuna was signed well before these problems arose. Maitan is possible to be taken from the Braves as well as other signees from last year, but Acuna and the other members of the earlier classes are safe.

We’ll have to see. It’s been reported that the issue dwarfs what the Red Sox did. Until the actual findings are released everything is just speculation. If it is as much bigger than what Boston did as it has been reported it could easily span multiple years. The Red Sox signings encompassed 18 players for reference and 5 players became free agents. To top that and be “much” bigger it would most likely span a larger period of time.

Really? did you not watch the world series with the ex braves factor?
This team might face penalties with Hart in charge.
the braves were supposed to be competitive when they opened their new ball park.
Minor league systems do not win ws titles.

Im assuming u are referring to brian mccann, gattis, and Morton. Brian mccann’s huge salary has already been traded again, Gattis is mostly a DH, and Morton was traded way before Hart’s time. And u really bought that they would be good this past year, thats organizational speak

Not really. The Marlins, rays,Indians mostly the two former have never sold out a game. They barely average 5k fans a game. At roy hallidays perfect game there was maybe 6 or 7k fans and most of them were Phillies fans. The brewers cant sellout unless they play the cubs. And in that case it’s 80/20 cubs fans.

The Indians didn’t have more than a dozen sell outs prior to their win streak. Last year when they won the AL central the game they clinched at least 40% of the seats were vacant.

Everyone expected this to happen. He presided over the problems they had and his loose reigns were the reason that Coppy was able to get away with the things that MLB is coming down on the team for. I thought that they would wait until the penalties were handed out.

Unless they can show that Coppy and co were actively working to specifically hide what they were doing from Hart… it’s hard to imagine a team opening themselves up to potential issues by giving him a job with a high degree of final authority over transactions. There’s lots of room in a front office without that kind of authority, though.

The last shoe left to drop is news of exactly which prospects, if any, the Braves lose as a result of this fiasco. I’m not an ATL fan, but I am happy for the organization that they now have Anthopoulos running the front office. Like him or not he has experience and is qualified to lead the franchise out of this dark chapter. As a baseball fan I never enjoy seeing this happen to any team, and I look forward to seeing the Braves take the next step in their rebuild in 2018.

Anthopoulis was extremely successful in legally gaming the free agent system by grabbing high end players around the trade deadline and then getting draft compensation at the end of the season. Other GMs couldn’t match him and MLB changed the rules to where a player had to be with the team the whole year for the team to get draft compensation. Those efforts took the Jays horrible farm team from worse to near the top in just a few years.

I wouldn’t call it gaming the system, I’d just call it being smart. If having a player at the end of the year gets you a draft pick, you value that draft pick, and the team that is trading that player to you doesn’t, then what’s unfair about that? They’re dumb and you’re smart, good for him for being smarter than the GMs essentially trading away free draft picks to him, I don’t know why they felt the need to change the rules just to stop him from taking advantage of the stupidity of others, if they wanted to keep being dumb he should’ve been allowed to keep taking advantage of that, it was 100% fair.

Nah JS in the 80s & 90s was the truth he didn’t ride anybody’s coattails in KC or Atlanta but that was then and this is now and the good ol boy regime hasn’t been able to change with the times
I appreciate what they were able to accomplish but with anything else over time they got comfortable and stubborn
Time for the new blood without having the old regime lurking over their shoulders

Atlanta fans are going to like AA. We called him the Ninja GM, because he played his cards close to his chest, but the results were great. Look for a guy that’s going to put in the work behind the scenes, with great scouting, a strong farm system and player development program, and a team that’s built the right way – with a good core of home grown players. He’s also a guy that would trade his mother if it would make the team better. Atlanta is going to be fun to watch..